A Survey Exhibition of Toronto Artists

Justina M. Barnicke Gallery / University of Toronto Art Centre will launch as one institution with a new look and a new name, at the opening of its new exhibition, Showroom, on January 21, 2016.

Details: Showroom is an exhibition that considers how artists have responded to the ubiquity of lifestyle marketing as a determining feature of the cityscape. A showroom is an aspirational space, not quite plausible except as image, devoid of the texture and details necessary to render a full life, but delivering something life-like. Where real estate sales rhetoric has appropriated the artist as a benign element in the landscape, Showroom reverses the figure/ground relationship in order to identify particular nodes of production amongst artists working here. This exhibition and related public programs sustain our engagement with developing Toronto art histories. Showroom constitutes the largest survey of Toronto artists within the combined history of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery and University of Toronto Art Centre.